Ancient and Modern Science. 9 



nent, brought ignorance in the wake of barbaric con- 

 quest. The result was that night came down upon 

 knowledge and thick darkness enveloped the lands 

 which were to be the nursery of a new civilisation. 

 When the Sun of science again began to rise upon the 

 Western world, it presented itself in a form which 

 was alien, nay, which was more than alien, which 

 was hostile to the dominant religion of the time. It 

 came from the children of Islam. It came from those 

 who recognised Muhammed as their Prophet. From 

 the Muslim schools of Arabia came the first teachers 

 of modern science to Europe. True, they were really 

 by their intellectual ancestry descended from the 

 thought of Greece. They drew their inspiration 

 from the school of Plato through the Neo-Platonists ; 

 they reproduced the ideas of Porphyry and Ptolemy, 

 and of other Grecian and Egyptian thinkers, Neo- 

 Platonic and even Gnostic. But they threw over it 

 the garb of Islam, they presented it in the form of 

 Arabic thought. The result of this was that, as it 

 made its way into Spain in the wake of the conquer- 

 ing Moors, as it came with those who drove out of 

 the Southern Peninsula the rule of the Spanish 

 Christian monarchy, so the first aspect of science 

 to Christians was an aspect of hostility. It came 

 as an invading enemy and not as an illuminant to 

 all. Hence conflict arose ; some who were within 



